Amir Shapiro is devising robots that mimic the best of the animal world

Gallery: Amir Shapiro is devising robots that mimic the best of the animal world

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This article was taken from the October 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

In Amir Shapiro's lab at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, there are five times more robots than people. "We are trying to make robots excel at walking and grasping things, so we build the hardware as well as the algorithms that run them," says the 41-year-old mechanical engineer.

Since 2006 the lab, based in the city of Beersheba, has created two-legged humanoids, dextrous quadrupeds, an artificial snake that can slither and record data under collapsed buildings, an agricultural robot that can spray vineyards and date palms, and four types of climbers which use aids such as claws or melted glue to scale walls. The common thread in his work: autonomy. "All these aspects of design and research are to make fully functional, independent robots," says Shapiro.

This article was first published in the October 2013 issue of WIRED magazine